Short Attention Spans Meet Infinite Choices
Whether it’s TV commercials, the internet, red dye #7, Chat GPT, social media, or microplastics, all of our attention spans have gotten shorter. Meanwhile, as our attention spans have shrunk, our options have been increasing exponentially! Right now, I can stream a dozen award-winning films. I can pull up a masterclass performance from a band everyone knows – on my phone! I can podcast and listen to the VERY BEST preaching in my car on the way to work.
Maybe this is why we’ve become more discerning (or critical). We have less attention to give and more excellent choices to give it to. I LOVE preaching! I’m always on the preacher’s side.
I look forward to church and hearing a good sermon. Yet, even I find my mind wandering.
After preaching full-time for close to 20 years, I stepped out of the pulpit. This break allowed me to survey the homiletical landscape and ask, “What kind of sermon do I like to hear? What kind of sermons do I want to preach?”
Boring Preaching
To be candid, I hadn’t really asked that question in almost two decades of preaching. I was focused on preaching every week, so I kept preaching the way I had been taught. I had EXCELLENT teachers, and they got me down the road just fine. Stepping from the pulpit into the pew for a few months allowed me to ask whether I was going down the road I wanted to travel.
The answer was yes and no. I was happy with my exegetical method – the study. I felt my tools and research discipline were in order. I was unhappy with my homiletical approach. I thought, “If I get bored preaching this, then they must be bored listening to this.”
As I prepared for my upcoming summer preaching gig, I decided to revisit my approach and look for a better way.
This led me to ask, “Who else talks in front of people?” (Stand-up comedians came to mind first, and I’ll write much more about that in the future.) I also marveled at the rise of interest in TED Talks. People were packing auditoriums, subscribing to podcasts, and posting links to their favorite LECTURES! What makes these different from sermons?
TED Talks vs. Sermons
TED Talks are shorter (think homilies, not sermons). These 5-15 minute lectures have a clear, one-sentence idea, and the speaker remains hyper-focused on it. If you want a quick fix for your sermons: shorten them! Make every word count! EVERY sentence, joke, story, and announcement should connect DIRECTLY back to your one-sentence theme.
One of the best compliments I ever received on my preaching came from someone on staff at another church. She attended a service at the chapel where I preach. Here, my sermons are more like homilies. She said, “You covered so much in 15 minutes! Every word mattered.” I thanked her for the compliment, but should have admitted that the sermon was originally 30 minutes long! I had simply taken it to the woodshed and whittled it down.
Preaching a homily is an art! I used to admire preachers who preached for 45-60 minutes and kept everyone engaged. (I’m looking at you, Erwin McManus…you warrior, poet, genius you.) Yet, the more I preach, the more I admire a pastor who can distill the same point, context, and emotional journey into 10 minutes. 45 minutes…that’s easy. 10 minutes require true inspiration.
President Woodrow Wilson is quoted as saying, “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.” This president, who helped lead the world to peace after World War I, understood how hard it is to bring focus to a speech. Yet according to his timeline, we all have enough time to prepare a focused and compelling message. Sunday is coming, so let’s get ready!
Write A One-Point Sermon
Start with one salient, sticky, main point – a CRYSTAL CLEAR BIG IDEA. It’s the ONE THING someone should say when you ask, “What was the sermon about?” If you’ve studied preaching in the last 30-50 years, you’ve heard it called: The Big Idea, The Takeaway, The Main Idea, or 100 other names. It’s the single sentence you want people to remember after your sermon.
You are mistaken if you think you can preach more than one idea and have people remember your three points when they walk out the door. Sorry! People might remember one of the three, but most likely, they’ll forget them all because you didn’t spend enough time on one.
This is why you have to be clear. You have to fight to get a BIG IDEA and work it until it’s as quippy as a commercial. Then that idea becomes the governor of your entire sermon. It determines what makes it in and what gets cut. The BIG IDEA is what you’re introducing, explaining, and sending home with everyone in your church.
Make Every Word Count
There are a dozen different ways to shape a sermon. Some prefer a deductive, toastmaster-like approach: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. Others prefer an inductive approach, a Socratic inquisitive method, slowly uncovering the truth. Some prefer a story model, building the sermon with a narrative arc, complete with rising action. (I think this last one works best, but you don’t have to agree.)
Regardless of the method you choose, these six practices will help you ensure every word in your message counts.
- Know the goal/where you’re going. Be specific about what change you are trying to inspire in your listeners. Write a mission statement for your sermon: “At the end of the message, my listeners will try .” Or it might be, “Listeners will be better informed about .” Or perhaps, “Listeners will feel more hopeful because __.” Start at the end and know what you want your listeners to think, feel, and do as a result of your message. Then set your gaze on that goal so every word moves you closer.
- Outline every thought. I write out my messages with a three-page outline. It’s not quite a manuscript, but it’s close. This practice forces me to identify the major themes and supporting points, and quickly weeds out ideas that don’t belong. If you’ve never done this, take your last set of sermon notes and tab the sentences into an outline. It will quickly reveal which points have the most content and which ideas you didn’t need. (download sample)
- Don’t always show your work. If you learned that the Greek word for “television” in your text meant an old school tube TV (like Jesus watched), you don’t have to say, “I looked this Greek word up. ‘Television’ in English is from the Greek word ’toobous’, meaning a tube TV.” You can keep all that research to yourself and let it simply inform your thoughts and story. For example, “The disciples were helping Matthew move his heavy tube TV. The kind your grandparents had that was encased in oak.” That’s more interesting and meaningful than a dictionary definition.
- Make sure EVERYTHING moves the big idea forward. A preacher complained to me once that their congregation only remembered the jokes & stories. Here’s the truth: the ONLY thing your listeners will remember is the jokes and stories. This is why your jokes and stories need to move the big idea forward. Don’t throw a joke in just for a laugh! Use a joke to parody a reality you’re describing. It will create something memorable that your audience will take and retell.
- Read it OUT LOUD! Written words hit a little differently than spoken words. This is why you need to read your messages out loud! Read them the way you intend to preach them and listen to yourself. If you hit a rough patch or are unsure of how something will go over, read it to someone you trust and get their advice. Never go into the pulpit with a sermon you’ve never heard!
Save Your Leftovers
One final word about the leftovers, because this method can be a bit ruthless on your research. It will make you toss hours of study out the window! If you’ve preached for any length of time, you know how much this hurts. You work for almost an hour, reading commentaries, chasing down a particular Greek word in multiple dictionaries, and finally, you learn the true range of meaning for a particular word. The problem is that the word means exactly what it means in English, or becomes irrelevant to the big idea you’re preaching. You spent an incredible amount of exegetical energy chasing rabbit trails only to find nothing at the end.
Don’t despair, keep your research notes and save them for future sermons. Don’t force them into the message. Unfortunately, many pulpiteers leave nothing out. They include everything they’ve learned, and their sermons sound like someone reading a book who stops to read every endnote as they encounter it. They kill their sermons by a thousand paper cuts.
Saving material isn’t as hard as it used to be. In the olden days, it hurt more. You had to physically pack up 5 (or 8) books and put them back on the shelves with nothing to show for it. Now we can hit “Ctrl + c” then “Ctrl + v” and save the research for another day. Almost all of my sermons have a page I don’t print labeled “Rejected Material.” I do that so when I come back to this text or topic in the future, I’ll have everything I’ve found.
Remember, the main point of the sermon isn’t how smart you are or how hard you studied. The main point is the BIG IDEA. It’s the one thing you want people to remember. Don’t cause them to forget because you wanted to parse a Greek word live on stage